Le Bourgeois gentilhomme

Frontispiece and titlepage of "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme" from a 1688 edition.

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (French pronunciation: [lə buʁʒwa ʒɑ̃tijɔm], The Bourgeois Gentleman or The Middle-Class Aristocrat or The Would-Be Noble) is a five-act comédie-ballet—a play intermingled with music, dance and singing—by Molière, first presented on 14 October 1670 before the court of Louis XIV at the Château of Chambord by Molière's troupe of actors. The music was composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully, the choreography was by Pierre Beauchamp, the sets were by Carlo Vigarani and the costumes were done by the chevalier d’Arvieux.

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme satirizes attempts at social climbing and the bourgeois personality, poking fun both at the vulgar, pretentious middle-class and the vain, snobbish aristocracy. The title is meant as an oxymoron: in Molière's France, a "gentleman" was by definition nobly born, and thus there could be no such thing as a bourgeois gentleman. The play is in prose (except for the ballet openings which are in verse).

Performances[link]

The original production brought together the finest actors and musicians of the time. Molière played the role of Monsieur Jourdain, clothed in bright colors trimmed with silver lace and muilticolored feathers; Hubert played Madame Jourdain ; Mlle de Brie played Dorimène; Armande Béjart played Lucile; and the composer Lully danced the mufti in the last act cérémonie des Turcs.

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme reflected the then-current trend for les turqueries, all things related to the Ottoman Empire. The work stemmed from the scandal caused by the Turkish ambassador Suleiman Aga who, upon visiting the court of Louis XIV in 1669, affirmed the superiority of the Ottoman court over that of the Sun King.

The first performance of Der Bürger als Edelmann, a German version of the play, took place on 25 October 1912, adapted by Hugo von Hofmannsthal with incidental music by Richard Strauss. The turquerie was replaced by an appended operatic entertainment Ariadne auf Naxos, composed by Strauss to a libretto by Hofmannsthal, in which Jourdain's eccentric requirements have led to Ariadne being marooned on a desert island where there just happens to be a commedia dell'arte troupe. The whole was directed by Max Reinhardt. The combination of play and opera proved problematic. Hofmannsthal created a revised version of the play, reinstating the turquerie and removing the opera. Strauss provided further incidental music including some arrangements of Lully. Meanwhile the entertainment was provided with a separate operatic prologue and this is the form in which Ariadne is now usually given.^[1]

George Balanchine choreographed a modern version in 1979 for the New York City Opera, using Strauss's score. The production starred Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, Patricia McBride, Rudolf Nureyev, Darla Hoover, Michael Puleo and students of the School of American Ballet.

In 2005 Le Poeme Harmonique in collaboration with Benjamin Lazar (stage director) and Cecile Roussat (choreographer) presented Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme at the Utrecht Baroque Festival. Informed by the musical and theatrical traditions of 17th century France, the production revived the musical and dance interludes originally scored by Jean-Baptiste Lully and the work was presented in its entirety. The wardrobe was notably bourgeois and ridiculous, evidently the intent of the directors to present Monsieur Jordain as a naive, stunned and yet vulnerable man new to the world of money and privilege "victim and architect of the action". The use of candlelight as the only lighting source on stage and a frontal performance style even during conversations between characters gave the production a distinctly baroque air and was well received. The 2005 production was the first ever since the play's first performance to render it in its entirety, as faithful as possible to the original score and script by Molière and Lully.

Roles[link]

Monsieur Jourdain

a bourgeois

Madame Jourdain

his wife

Lucile

the daughter of Monsieur Jourdain

Nicole

their maid

Cléonte

suitor of Lucile

Covielle

Cléonte's lackey and who takes an interest in Nicole

Dorante

Count, suitor of Dorimène

Dorimène

Marchioness, a widow

Music Master

Pupil of the Music Master

Dancing Master

Fencing Master

Master of Philosophy

Tailor

Tailor's apprentice

Two lackeys

Many male and female musicians, instrumentalists, dancers, cooks, tailor's apprentices, and others are needed for the interludes.

Synopsis[link]

The play takes place at Mr. Jourdain's house in Paris. Jourdain is a middle-aged "bourgeois" whose father grew rich as a cloth merchant. The foolish Jourdain now has one aim in life, which is to rise above this middle-class background and be accepted as an aristocrat. To this end, he orders splendid new clothes and is very happy when the tailor's boy mockingly addresses him as "my Lord". He applies himself to learning the gentlemanly arts of fencing, dancing, music and philosophy, despite his age; in doing so he continually manages to make a fool of himself, to the disgust of his hired teachers. His philosophy lesson becomes a basic lesson on language in which he is surprised and delighted to learn that he has been speaking "prose" all his life without knowing it:

« Par ma foi ! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien, et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m'avoir appris cela. »

Madame Jourdain, his intelligent wife, sees that he is making a fool of himself and urges him to return to his previous middle-class life, and to forget all he has learned. A cash-strapped nobleman called Dorante has attached himself to M. Jourdain. He secretly despises Jourdain but flatters his aristocratic dreams. For example, by telling Jourdain that he mentioned his name to the King at Versailles he can get Jourdain to pay his debts. Jourdain's dreams of being highclass go higher and higher. He dreams of marrying a Marchioness, Dorimene, and having his daughter Lucille marry a nobleman. But Lucille is in love with the middle-class Cléonte. Of course, M. Jourdain refuses his permission for Lucille to marry Cléonte.

Then Cléonte, with the assistance of his valet Covielle and Mme Jourdain, disguises himself and presents himself to Jourdain as the son of the Sultan of Turkey. Jourdain is taken in and is very pleased to have his daughter marry foreign royalty. He is even more delighted when the "Turkish prince" informs him that, as father of the bride, he too will be officially ennobled at a special ceremony. The play ends with this ridiculous ceremony, including Sabir standing in for Turkish.

Media[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Middle-Class Gentleman

French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Le Bourgeois gentilhomme

• "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme" English translation on the Gutenberg Project
• "The Bourgeois Nobleman" English translation by Sue Rippon
• "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme" Original texts (French) from Site-moliere.com
• Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme: Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project

v t e Works by Molière Le Médecin volant Les Précieuses ridicules The School for Wives Tartuffe Dom Juan L'Amour médecin The Misanthrope Le Médecin malgré lui Amphitryon George Dandin ou le Mari confondu The Miser Monsieur de Pourceaugnac Le Bourgeois gentilhomme Psyché Les Fourberies de Scapin Les Femmes Savantes The Imaginary Invalid

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste de Lully (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃batist də lyˈli]; Italian: Giovanni Battista Lulli; 28 November 1632 – 22 March 1687) was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in 1661.

Biography[link]

Portrait & signature of Jean Baptiste Lully around the 1670s, shows the composer in middle age

Lully, son of a working-class miller, was born in Florence, Italy. Lully had little education, but he learned basic techniques on the guitar, originally taught by a Franciscan friar of Florence. Later in France, he learned how to play the violin, and to dance. In 1646, he was discovered by Roger de Lorraine, the chevalier de Guise, son of Charles, Duke of Guise, and was taken to France, where he entered the services of Mademoiselle de Montpensier (la Grande Mademoiselle) as a scullery-boy and Italian-language teacher. With the help of this princess, his talent increased. He studied the theory of music under Nicolas Métru. It has been said that a scurrilous song on his patroness (the doggerel he set to music refers to a "sigh" she produced while at stool) resulted in his dismissal. It is far more likely that he did not want to moulder out in the provinces with the exiled princess.^{[citation needed]}

He came into Louis XIV's service in late 1652, early 1653 as a dancer. He composed some music for the Ballet de la nuit, which pleased the king immensely. He was appointed as the composer of instrumental music to the king, and placed at the head of the Petits Violons, the kings private violin band. In 1661, the King appointed Lully the Surintendant de la musique de la chambre du roi, which brought the twenty-four violons of the Grand Bande of Les Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi under Lully's command.^[1]

Lully composed many ballets for the King during the 1650s and 1660s, in which the King and Lully himself danced. He also had tremendous success composing the music for the comedies of Molière, including Le Mariage forcé (1664), L'Amour médecin (1665), and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670). It was when he met Molière that together they created the comédie-ballet. Louis XIV's interest in ballet waned as he aged, and his dancing ability declined (his last performance was in 1670) and so Lully pursued opera. He bought the privilege for opera from Pierre Perrin and, with the backing of Jean-Baptiste Colbert and the king, created a new privilege which essentially gave Lully complete control of all music performed in France until his death in 1687.

He was known to be a libertine. In 1661, in letters of naturalization and in his marriage contract to Madeleine Lambert, daughter of Lully's friend and fellow musician Michel Lambert, Giovanni Battista Lulli declared himself as "'Jean-Baptiste de Lully, escuyer' son of 'Laurent de Lully, gentilhomme Florentin'".^[2] Although his life is full of meteoric heights, his love affairs with men and women also brought him down in scandal several times at the great displeasure of Louis XIV. Despite these scandals, he always managed to get back into the good graces of Louis, who found Lully essential for his musical entertainments and who thought of Lully as one of his few true friends.

On 8 January 1687, Lully was conducting a Te Deum in honor of Louis XIV's recent recovery from illness. He was beating time by banging a long staff (a precursor to the bâton) against the floor, as was the common practice at the time, when he struck his toe, creating an abscess. The wound turned gangrenous, but Lully refused to have his toe amputated and the gangrene spread, resulting in his death on 22 March. He left his last opera, Achille et Polyxène, unfinished. All three of his sons -- Louis Lully, Jean-Baptiste Lully fils and Jean-Louis Lully -- also had musical careers at the French court.

Music[link]

Jean-Baptiste Lully's Alceste Ballet in the marble courtyard at the Palace of Versailles, 1674.

Lully's music is from the Middle Baroque period, 1650 to 1700. Typical of Baroque music is the use of the basso continuo as the driving force behind the music. The pitch standard for French Baroque music was about 392 Hz for A above middle C, a whole tone lower than modern practice where A is usually 440 Hz.

Lully's music is known for its power, liveliness in its fast movements and its deep emotional character in its sad movements. Some of his most popular works are his passacaille (passacaglia) and chaconne which are dance movements found in many of his works such as Armide or Phaëton.

The influence of Lully's music produced a radical revolution in the style of the dances of the court itself. Instead of the slow and stately movements which had prevailed until then, he introduced lively ballets of rapid rhythm. Lully also enjoyed the friendship of Molière, with whom he created a new music form, the comédie-ballet which combined theater, comedy, and ballet. He played a crucial role in synthesizing, consolidating and disseminating orchestral organization, scorings, performance practices, and repertory.

"Portrait of several musicians and artists" by François Puget. Traditionally the two main figures have been identified as the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully and the librettist Philippe Quinault. (Musée du Louvre).

The instruments in his music were: five voices of strings such as dessus (a higher voice range than soprano), haute-contre (a type of high tenor voice), taille (baritenor), quinte, basse), divided as follows: one voice of violins, three voices of violas, one voice of cello, and basse de viole (viole, viola da gamba). He also utilized guitar, lute, archlute, theorbo, harpsichord, organ, oboe, bassoon, recorder, flute, brass instruments and various percussion instruments.

He is often credited with introducing new instruments into the orchestra, but this legend needs closer scrutiny. He continued to use recorders in preference to the newer transverse flute, and the "hautbois" he used in his orchestra were transitional instruments, somewhere between shawms and so-called Baroque oboes.^[3]

Lully founded French opera (tragédie en musique or tragédie lyrique), having found Italian-style opera inappropriate for the French language. Having found a congenial poet and librettist in Philippe Quinault, Lully composed many operas and other works, which were received enthusiastically. Lully can be considered the founder of French opera, having forsaken the Italian method of dividing musical numbers into separate recitatives and arias, choosing instead to combine the two for dramatic effect. Lully also opted for quicker story development as was more to the taste of the French public.

Lully's music is still played regularly via recordings at the Palace of Versailles during the summertime in the gardens, setting the mood for one's visit.

Media[link]

 Chœur des divinités de la terre et des eaux, from Psyché (1687) - Midi file (help·info)

Cultural references[link]

• The relationship between Louis XIV and Lully was depicted in the French film by Gérard Corbiau, Le Roi danse (The King is dancing) in 2000.

• For his family, see the article by Jérôme de La Gorce, "Lully's Tuscan Family," pp. 1–15. The rest of the articles focus primarily on his music and its reception. Giannini, Tula. "The Music Library of Jean-Baptiste Christophe Ballard, Sole Music Printer to the King of France, 1750 Inventory of his Grand Collection Brought to Light." Indexed in RILM. See article at the Pratt Institute.^[4]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Scott, R.H.F. (1973). Jean-Baptiste Lully. London: Peter Owen Limited. ISBN 0-7206-0432-X. 
• Stanley, Sadie; Rosow, Lois (1992). "Lully, Jean-Baptiste". The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-73432-7. 
• Green, Robert A. (2002). "Lully, Jean-Baptiste". glbtq Encyclopaedia. glbtq.com. http://www.glbtq.com/arts/lully_jb.html. Retrieved 2007-08-16. 
• Heyer, John Hajdu, ed. (2000). Lully Studies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62183-6. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jean-Baptiste Lully

Wikisource has the text of an 1879 American Cyclopædia article about Jean-Baptiste Lully.

Ballet portal

• Free scores by Jean-Baptiste Lully in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Jean-Baptiste Lully at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Jean-Baptiste Lully in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• The Mutopia Project has compositions by Jean-Baptiste Lully
• Jean-Baptiste Lully Collection at the University of North Texas
• Bibliothèque Nationale de France has a collection of autographs available on-line.
•  W. H. Grattan Flood (1913). "Jean-Baptiste Lully". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

1918 portrait of Strauss by Max Liebermann.

Signature of Dr. Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and other orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Also sprach Zarathustra, An Alpine Symphony, and Metamorphosen. Strauss was also a prominent conductor throughout Germany and Austria.

Strauss, along with Gustav Mahler, represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.

Life and works[link]

Early life and family[link]

Strauss age 24

Strauss was born on 11 June 1864, in Munich, the son of Franz Strauss, who was the principal horn player at the Court Opera in Munich. In his youth, he received a thorough musical education from his father. He wrote his first composition at the age of six, and continued to write music almost until his death.

During his boyhood Strauss attended orchestra rehearsals of the Munich Court Orchestra, and he also received private instruction in music theory and orchestration from an assistant conductor there. In 1874 Strauss heard his first Wagner operas, Lohengrin and Tannhäuser. The influence of Wagner's music on Strauss's style was to be profound, but at first his musically conservative father forbade him to study it. Indeed, in the Strauss household, the music of Richard Wagner was viewed with deep suspicion, and it was not until the age of 16 that Strauss was able to obtain a score of Tristan und Isolde. In later life, Richard Strauss said that he deeply regretted the conservative hostility to Wagner's progressive works.^[1] Nevertheless, Strauss's father undoubtedly had a crucial influence on his son's developing taste, not least in Strauss's abiding love for the horn.

In 1882 he entered Munich University, where he studied Philosophy and Art History, but not music. He left a year later to go to Berlin, where he studied briefly before securing a post as assistant conductor to Hans von Bülow, who had been enormously impressed by the young composer's Serenade for wind instruments, composed when he was only 16 years of age. Strauss learned the art of conducting by observing Bülow in rehearsal. Bülow was very fond of the young man and decided that Strauss should be his successor as conductor of the Meiningen orchestra when Bülow resigned in 1885. Strauss's compositions at this time were indebted to the style of Robert Schumann or Felix Mendelssohn, true to his father's teachings. His remarkably mature Horn Concerto No. 1, Op. 11, is representative of this period and is a staple of modern horn repertoire.

Richard Strauss married soprano Pauline de Ahna on 10 September 1894. She was famous for being irascible, garrulous, eccentric and outspoken, but the marriage, to all appearances, was essentially happy and she was a great source of inspiration to him. Throughout his life, from his earliest songs to the final Four Last Songs of 1948, he preferred the soprano voice to all others, and all his operas contain important soprano roles.

The Strausses had one son, Franz, in 1897. Franz married Alice von Grab, a Jewish woman, in a Catholic ceremony in 1924. Franz and Alice had two sons, Richard and Christian.

Works[link]

Solo and chamber works[link]

Some of Strauss's first compositions were solo and chamber works. These pieces include: early compositions for piano solo in a conservative harmonic style, many of which are lost; a string quartet (opus 2); a cello sonata; a piano quartet; Violin Sonata in E flat (1888); as well as a handful of late pieces.

After 1890 Strauss composed very infrequently for chamber groups, his energies being almost completely absorbed with large-scale orchestral works and operas. Four of his chamber pieces are actually arrangements of portions of his operas, including the Daphne-Etude for solo violin, and the string Sextet which is the overture to his final opera Capriccio. His last independent chamber work, an Allegretto in E for violin and piano, dates from 1940.

Tone poems and other orchestral works[link]

Strauss's style began to truly develop and change when, in 1885, he met Alexander Ritter, a noted composer and violinist, and the husband of one of Richard Wagner's nieces. It was Ritter who persuaded Strauss to abandon the conservative style of his youth, and begin writing tone poems. He also introduced Strauss to the essays of Richard Wagner and the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer. Strauss went on to conduct one of Ritter's operas, and at Strauss's request Ritter later wrote a poem describing the events depicted in Strauss's tone poem Death and Transfiguration.

The new influences from Ritter resulted in what is widely regarded^[2] as Strauss's first piece to show his mature personality, the tone poem Don Juan (1888), which displays a new kind of virtuosity in its bravura orchestral manner. Strauss went on to write a series of increasingly ambitious tone poems: Death and Transfiguration (1889), Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (1895), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1896), Don Quixote (1897), A Hero's Life (1898), Symphonia Domestica (1903) and An Alpine Symphony (1911–1915). One commentator has observed of these works that "no orchestra could exist without his tone poems, written to celebrate the glories of the post-Wagnerian symphony orchestra."^[3]

Solo instrument with orchestra[link]

Strauss's output of works for solo instrument or instruments with orchestra was fairly extensive. The most famous include two concertos for horn, which are still part of the standard repertoire of most horn soloists; a Violin Concerto in D minor; the Burleske for piano and orchestra; the tone poem Don Quixote for cello, viola and orchestra; the well-known late Oboe Concerto in D major; and the Duet-Concertino for bassoon, clarinet and orchestra, which was one of his last works (1947).

Opera[link]

Richard Strauss engraved by Ferdinand Schmutzer (1922)

Around the end of the 19th century, Strauss turned his attention to opera. His first two attempts in the genre, Guntram (1894) and Feuersnot (1901), were controversial works: Guntram was the first significant critical failure of Strauss's career, and Feuersnot was considered obscene by some critics.^[4]

In 1905, Strauss produced Salome, a somewhat dissonant modernist opera based on the play by Oscar Wilde, which produced a passionate reaction from audiences. The premiere was a major success, with the artists taking more than 38 curtain calls.^[5] Many later performances of the opera were also successful, not only with the general public but also with Strauss's peers: Maurice Ravel said that Salome was "stupendous",^[6] and Mahler described it as "a live volcano, a subterranean fire".^[7] Strauss reputedly financed his house in Garmisch-Partenkirchen completely from the revenues generated by the opera.

Strauss's next opera was Elektra (1909), which took his use of dissonance even further, in particular with the Elektra chord. Elektra was also the first opera in which Strauss collaborated with the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The two subsequently worked together on numerous occasions. For his later works with Hofmannsthal, Strauss moderated his harmonic language: he used a more lush, melodic late-Romantic style based on Wagnerian chromatic harmonies that he had used in his tone poems, with much less dissonance, and exhibiting immense virtuosity in orchestral writing and tone color. This resulted in operas such as Der Rosenkavalier (1911) having great public success. Strauss continued to produce operas at regular intervals until 1942. With Hofmannsthal he created Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1918), Die ägyptische Helena (1927), and Arabella (1932). For Intermezzo (1923) Strauss provided his own libretto. Die schweigsame Frau (1934), was composed with Stefan Zweig as librettist; Friedenstag (1935–6) and Daphne (1937) both had a libretto by Joseph Gregor and Stefan Zweig; and Die Liebe der Danae (1940) was with Joseph Gregor. Strauss's final opera, Capriccio (1942), had a libretto by Clemens Krauss, although the genesis for it came from Stefan Zweig and Joseph Gregor.

Lieder[link]

All his life Strauss produced Lieder. The Four Last Songs are among his best known, along with "Zueignung", "Cäcilie", "Morgen!", "Allerseelen", and others. In 1948, Strauss wrote his last work, the masterful and haunting Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra. He reportedly composed them with Kirsten Flagstad in mind, and she gave the first performance, which was recorded. Strauss's songs have always been popular with audiences and performers, and are generally considered^{[by whom?]} – along with many of his other compositions – to be masterpieces of the first rank.

Strauss in Nazi Germany[link]

[edit] The Nazi Reich forms the Reichsmusikkammer

In March 1933, when Richard Strauss was 68, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power. Strauss never joined the Nazi party, and studiously avoided Nazi forms of greeting. For reasons of expediency, however, he was initially drawn into cooperating with the early Nazi regime in the hope that Hitler — an ardent Wagnerian and music lover who had admired Strauss's work since viewing Salome in 1907 — would promote German art and culture. Strauss's need to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and Jewish grandchildren also motivated his behavior, in addition to his determination to preserve and conduct the music of banned composers such as Mahler and Debussy.

In 1933, Strauss wrote in his private notebook:

I consider the Streicher-Goebbels Jew-baiting as a disgrace to German honour, as evidence of incompetence — the basest weapon of untalented, lazy mediocrity against a higher intelligence and greater talent.^[8]

Meanwhile, far from being an admirer of Strauss's work, Joseph Goebbels maintained expedient cordiality with Strauss only for a period. Goebbels wrote in his diary:

Unfortunately we still need him, but one day we shall have our own music and then we shall have no further need of this decadent neurotic.^[9]

Nevertheless, because of Strauss's international eminence, in November 1933 he was appointed to the post of president of the Reichsmusikkammer, the State Music Bureau. Strauss, who had lived through numerous political regimes and had no interest in politics, decided to accept the position but to remain apolitical, a decision which would eventually become untenable. He wrote to his family, "I made music under the Kaiser, and under Ebert. I'll survive under this one as well."^[10] In 1935 he wrote in his journal:

In November of 1933, the minister Goebbels nominated me president of the Reichsmusikkammer without obtaining my prior agreement. I was not consulted. I accepted this honorary office because I hoped that I would be able to do some good and prevent worse misfortunes, if from now onwards German musical life were going to be, as it was said, "reorganized" by amateurs and ignorant place-seekers.^[10]

Strauss privately scorned Goebbels and called him "a pipsqueak."^[11] In order to gain Goebbels' cooperation, however, in extending the German music copyright laws from 30 years to 50 years, in 1933 Strauss dedicated an orchestral song, Das Bächlein ("The Little Brook") to him.^[12]

Strauss attempted to ignore Nazi bans on performances of works by Debussy, Mahler, and Mendelssohn. He also continued to work on a comic opera, Die schweigsame Frau, with his Jewish friend and librettist Stefan Zweig. When the opera was premiered in Dresden in 1935, Strauss insisted that Zweig's name appear on the theatrical billing, much to the ire of the Nazi regime. Hitler and Goebbels avoided attending the opera, and it was halted after three performances and subsequently banned by the Third Reich.^[13]

On 17 June 1935, Strauss wrote a letter to Stefan Zweig, in which he stated:

Do you believe I am ever, in any of my actions, guided by the thought that I am 'German'? Do you suppose Mozart was consciously 'Aryan' when he composed? I recognise only two types of people: those who have talent and those who have none.^[14]

This letter to Zweig was intercepted by the Gestapo and sent to Hitler. Strauss was subsequently dismissed from his post as Reichsmusikkammer president in 1935. The 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics nevertheless used Strauss's Olympische Hymne, which he had composed in 1934. Strauss's seeming relationship with the Nazis in the 1930s attracted criticism from some noted musicians, including Arturo Toscanini, who in 1933 had said, "To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again," when Strauss had accepted the presidency of the Reichsmusikkammer.^[15] Much of Strauss's motivation in his conduct during the Third Reich was, however, to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law Alice and his Jewish grandchildren from persecution. Both of his grandsons were bullied at school, but Strauss used his considerable influence to prevent the boys or their mother from being sent to concentration camps.^[16]

[edit] Friedenstag

In 1938, when the entire nation was preparing for war, Strauss created Friedenstag (Peace Day), a one-act opera set in a besieged fortress during the Thirty Years' War. The work is essentially a hymn to peace and a thinly veiled criticism of the Third Reich. With its contrasts between freedom and enslavement, war and peace, light and dark, this work has a close affinity with Beethoven's Fidelio. Productions of the opera ceased shortly after the outbreak of war in 1939.

When his Jewish daughter-in-law Alice was placed under house arrest in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1938, Strauss used his connections in Berlin, including the Berlin intendant Heinz Tietjen, to secure her safety. He drove to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in order to argue, albeit unsuccessfully, for the release of his son Franz's Jewish mother-in-law, Marie von Grab. Strauss also wrote several letters to the SS pleading for the release of her children who were also held in camps; his letters were ignored.^[17]

In 1942, Strauss moved with his family back to Vienna, where Alice and her children could be protected by Baldur von Schirach, the Gauleiter of Vienna. Strauss was unable, however, to protect his Jewish relatives completely; in early 1944, while Strauss was away, Alice and his son Franz were abducted by the Gestapo and imprisoned for two nights. Only Strauss's personal intervention at this point was able to save them, and he was able to take the two of them back to Garmisch, where they remained under house arrest until the end of the war.

[edit] Metamorphosen

Strauss completed the composition of Metamorphosen, a work for 23 solo strings, in 1945. The title and inspiration for the work comes from a profoundly self-examining poem by Goethe, which Strauss had considered setting as a choral work.^[18] Generally regarded as one of the masterpieces of the string repertoire, Metamorphosen contains Strauss's most sustained outpouring of tragic emotion. Conceived and written during the blackest days of World War II, the piece expresses in music Strauss's mourning of, among other things, the destruction of German culture — including the bombing of every great opera house in the nation. At the end of the war, Strauss wrote in his private diary:

The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany's 2000 years of cultural evolution met its doom.^[19]

In April 1945, Strauss was apprehended by American soldiers at his Garmisch estate. As he descended the staircase he announced to Lieutenant Milton Weiss of the U.S. Army, "I am Richard Strauss, the composer of Rosenkavalier and Salome." Lt. Weiss, who, as it happened, was also a musician, nodded in recognition. An 'Off Limits' sign was subsequently placed on the lawn to protect Strauss.^[20] The American oboist John de Lancie, who knew Strauss's orchestral writing for oboe thoroughly, was in the army unit, and asked Strauss to compose an oboe concerto. Initially dismissive of the idea, Strauss completed this late masterpiece, his Oboe Concerto, before the end of the year.

Final upsurge of genius[link]

The metaphor "Indian Summer" is often used by journalists, biographers, and music critics to describe Strauss's late upsurge of genius from 1942 through the end of his life. The horrifying events of World War II seemed to bring the composer — who had grown old, tired, and a little jaded — into focus. The major works of the last years of Strauss's life, written in his late 70s and 80s, have a luminosity which matches anything he had composed earlier in his life, and they surpass most of them in emotional depth.^[21] These pieces include, among others, his Horn Concerto No. 2, Metamorphosen, his Oboe Concerto, and his masterful and haunting Four Last Songs.

The Four Last Songs, composed shortly before Strauss's death, deal poetically with the subject of dying. The last, "At Sunset" (Im Abendrot), ends with the line "Is this perhaps death?" The question is not answered in words, but instead Strauss quotes the "transfiguration theme" from his earlier tone poem, Death and Transfiguration — symbolizing the transfiguration and fulfillment of the soul after death.

Death and legacy[link]

Stamp issued in 1954

Richard Strauss died at the age of 85 on 8 September, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Georg Solti, who had arranged Strauss's 85th birthday celebration, also directed an orchestra during Strauss's burial.^[22] During the singing of the famous trio from Rosenkavalier, Solti described how "each singer broke down in tears and dropped out of the ensemble, but they recovered themselves and we all ended together." Strauss's wife, Paulina, died eight months later, on 13 May, 1950, at the age of 88.^[23]

During his lifetime Strauss was considered the greatest composer of the first half of the 20th century, and his music had a profound influence on the development of 20th-century music. There were few 20th-century composers who compared with Strauss in terms of orchestral imagination, and no composer since Wagner made a more significant contribution to the history of opera. And Strauss's late works, modelled on "the divine Mozart at the end of a life full of thankfulness,"^[24] are perhaps the most remarkable works by any octogenarian composer.

Strauss himself declared in 1947 with characteristic self-deprecation, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer." The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould described Strauss in 1962 as "the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century."^[25]

Strauss as a conductor[link]

Richard Strauss during his career.

Strauss, as conductor, made a large number of recordings, both of his own music as well as music by German and Austrian composers.

His 1929 performances of Till Eulenspiegel and Don Juan with the Berlin State Opera Orchestra have long been considered the best of his early electrical recordings; even the original 78 rpm discs had superior sound for their time, and the performances were top-notch and quite exciting at times, despite a noticeable mistake by the Horn soloist in the famous opening passage of Till Eulenspiegel.

One of the more interesting of Strauss's recordings is perhaps the first complete performance of his An Alpine Symphony, made in 1941 and later released by EMI, because Strauss used the full complement of percussion instruments required in this spectacular symphony. The intensity of the performance rivaled that of the digital recording Herbert von Karajan made many years later with the Berlin Philharmonic.

Music critic Harold C. Schonberg in The Great Conductors (1967), says that while Strauss was a very fine conductor, he often put scant effort into his recordings. Schonberg focused primarily on Strauss's recordings of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, as well as noting that Strauss played a breakneck version of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in about 45 minutes. Concerning the Beethoven 7th symphony, Schonberg wrote, "There is almost never a ritard or a change in expression or nuance. The slow movement is almost as fast as the following vivace; and the last movement, with a big cut in it, is finished in 4 minutes, 25 seconds. (It should run between 7 and 8 minutes.)" Schonberg also complained that the Mozart symphony had "no force, no charm, no inflection, with a metronomic rigidity."

Peter Gutmann's 1994 review for ClassicalNotes.com says the performances of the Beethoven 5th and 7th symphonies, as well as Mozart's last three symphonies, are actually quite good, even if they are sometimes unconventional. Gutman wrote:

The Koch CDs represent all of Strauss's recordings of works by other composers. The best of his readings of his own famous tone poems and other music are collected on DGG 429 925-2, 3 CDs. It is true, as the critics suggest, that the readings forego overt emotion, but what emerges instead is a solid sense of structure, letting the music speak convincingly for itself. It is also true that Strauss's tempos are generally swift, but this, too, contributes to the structural cohesion and in any event is fully in keeping with our modern outlook in which speed is a virtue and attention spans are defined more by MTV clips and news sound bites than by evenings at the opera and thousand page novels.

Koch Legacy has also released Strauss's recordings of overtures by Gluck, Carl Maria von Weber, Peter Cornelius, and Wagner. The preference for German and Austrian composers in Germany in the 1920s through the 1940s was typical of the German nationalism that existed after World War I. Strauss clearly capitalized on national pride for the great German-speaking composers.

There were many other recordings, including some taken from radio broadcasts and concerts, during the 1930s and early 1940s. The sheer volume of recorded performances would undoubtedly yield some definitive performances from a very capable and rather forward-looking conductor.

In 1944, Strauss celebrated his 80th birthday and conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in recordings of his own major orchestral works, as well as his seldom-heard Schlagobers ("Whipped Cream") ballet music. Some find more feeling in these performances than in Strauss's earlier recordings, which were recorded on the Magnetophon tape recording equipment. Vanguard Records later issued the recordings on LPs. Some of these recordings have been reissued on CD by Preiser and are of remarkable fidelity.

Strauss also made live-recording player piano music rolls for the Hupfeld system, all of which survive today.

Richard Strauss was the composer of the music on the first CD to be commercially released: Deutsche Grammophon's 1983 release of their 1980 recording of Herbert von Karajan conducting the Alpine Symphony.

Works[link]

Selected major works[link]

Operas[link]

See List of operas by Richard Strauss

Ballet music[link]

• Josephslegende (The Legend of Joseph), Op. 63 (1914)
• Schlagobers (Whipped Cream), Op. 70 (1921/2)

Tone poems[link]

• Aus Italien (From Italy), Op. 16 (1886)
• Don Juan, Op. 20 (1889)
• Macbeth, Op. 23 (1888/90)
• Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), Op. 24 (1888–89)
• Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks), Op. 28 (1895)
• Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), Op. 30 (1896)
• Don Quixote, Op. 35 (1898)
• Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), Op. 40 (1899)
• Symphonia Domestica (Domestic Symphony), Op. 53 (1904)
• Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony), Op. 64 (1915)

Other orchestral works[link]

• Symphony in D minor (1880)
• Symphony No. 2 in F minor, Op. 12 (1883)
• Festive Prelude for orchestra with organ (1913)
• Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, suite for orchestra Op. 60 (1917)
• Film music for Der Rosenkavalier (1925)
• Japanese Festival Music (1940)
• Metamorphosen, for 23 solo strings (1945)

Keyboard[link]

• Fünf Klavierstücke, Op. 3 (1880–81)
• Sonata for piano in B minor, Op. 5 (1880–81)

Concertante[link]

	Burleske noicon Burleske (1885–86), performed by Neal O'Doan with the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

• Romance for Clarinet and Orchestra (1879)
• Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 8 (1882)
• Horn Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, Op. 11 (1882/83)
• Romance for Cello and Orchestra (1883)
• Burleske for piano and orchestra (1886–1890)
• Parergon zur Symphonia Domestica, for piano (left hand) and orchestra, Op. 73 (1925; ded. Paul Wittgenstein)
• Panathenäenzug, for piano (left hand) and orchestra, Op. 74 (1926–1927; ded. Wittgenstein)
• Horn Concerto No. 2 in E flat major (1942)
• Oboe Concerto in D major (1945)
• Duett-Concertino, for clarinet and bassoon with string orchestra (1947)

Vocal/Choral[link]

• Acht Lieder aus Letzte Blätter, Op. 10 (1885)
• Ruhe, meine Seele! ("Rest, My Soul!") Op. 27 No. 1
• Cäcilie, Op. 27 No. 2
• Heimliche Aufforderung ("Secret Invitation"), Op. 27 No. 3
• Morgen! ("Tomorrow!"), Op. 27 No. 4
• Zwei Gesänge, Op. 34 (1896/97) – 1. Der Abend 2. Hymne
• Wiegenlied ("Lullaby"), Op. 41 No. 1
• Deutsche Motette, Op. 62 (1913)
• Olympische Hymne, for chorus and orchestra (1934)
• Die Göttin im Putzzimmer (1935)
• Männerchöre (1935)
• An den Baum Daphne (1943)
• Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) (1948)

Chamber[link]

• Sonata for Cello and Piano in F, Op. 6 (1883)
• Violin Sonata in E-flat, Op. 18 (1888)

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

Selective bibliography[link]

• Kennedy, Michael (1999). Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-58173-7.
• Del Mar, Norman (1962). Richard Strauss. London: Barrie & Jenkins. ISBN 0-214-15735-0.
• Tuchman, Barbara W. (1966, reprinted 1980). The Proud Tower chapter 6. Macmillan, London. ISBN 0-333-30645-7.
• Gilliam, Bryan (1999). The Life of Richard Strauss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-57895-7.
• Osborne, Charles (1991). The Complete Operas of Richard Strauss. New York City: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80459-X.
• Wilhelm, Kurt (1989). Richard Strauss: An Intimate Portrait. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-01459-0.
• Youmans, Charles (2005). Richard Strauss's Orchestral Music and the German Intellectual Tradition: the Philosophical Roots of Musical Modernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-34573-1.
• Karpath, Ludwig and Strauss, Richard (1905–1936). The handwritten correspondence between Richard Strauss and Ludwig Karpath, covering 31 years was acquired by the National Library of Austria in 1962 from the daughters of Dr. Alfred Marill who was Mr. Karpath's attorney.^{[citation needed]} It consists of approximately 150 items covering Strauss relationships with the Vienna State Opera and other musical events of the period. It stops at the death of Ludwig Karpath in 1936. Dr. Alfred Marill was Mr. Karpath's executor. The terms of Karpath's will stipulated that the correspondence between Karpath and Strauss not be published until after Richard Strauss's death.^{[citation needed]} In keeping with these terms Dr. Marill transported it to the United States when he emigrated in 1940. After Dr. Marill's death his daughters provided the letters to the library so that Mr. Karpath's wishes could be carried out. There is no evidence that these letters have been published.^{[citation needed]}

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Richard Strauss

Wikisource has the text of a 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article about Richard Strauss.

• Richard Strauss online
• Richard Strauss Institute, in English
• Free scores by Richard Strauss at the International Music Score Library Project
• Works by or about Richard Strauss in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Free scores by Richard Strauss in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• In America with Richard Strauss: Elisabeth Schumann's 1921 diary

v t e Vienna Staatsoper General Directors Franz von Dingelstedt (1867) Johann von Herbeck (1870) Franz von Jauner (1875) Wilhelm Jahn (1881) Gustav Mahler (1897) Felix Weingartner (1908) Hans Gregor (1911) Richard Strauss / Franz Schalk (1919) Franz Schalk (1924) Clemens Krauss (1929) Felix Weingartner (1935) Heinrich Karl Strohm (1940) Lothar Müthel (1941) Karl Böhm (1943) Franz Salmhofer (1945) Karl Böhm (1954) Herbert von Karajan (1956) Egon Hilbert (1964) Heinrich Reif-Gintl (1968) Rudolf Gamsjäger (1972) Egon Seefehlner (1976) Lorin Maazel (1982) Egon Seefehlner (1984) Claus Helmut Drese (1986) Eberhard Wächter / Ioan Holender (1991) Ioan Holender (1992)

François Morel (born 14 March 1926) is a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and music educator. An associate of the Canadian Music Centre, he was made a Knight of the National Order of Quebec in 1994 and was awarded the Prix Denise-Pelletier in 1996. He has had his works premiered by the CBC Symphony Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.^[1]

Life and career[link]

Born in Montreal, Morel studied at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal from 1944–1953. His teachers included Claude Champagne (composition), Isabelle Delorme (harmony, counterpoint, fugue), Gérald Gagnier (conducting), Arthur Letondal (piano), Germaine Malépart, Jean Papineau-Couture (acoustics), and Edmond Trudel (piano). He was a founding member of the Canadian League of Composers in 1951. From 1956–1979 he worked for CBC Radio as a composer of incidental music, music consultant, and researcher.

Morel taught music analysis and composition at the Institut Nazareth from 1959–1961. In 1972 he was appointed director of the Académie de musique du Québec, a position he held through 1978. From 1976–1979 he taught at the Bourgchemin Cegep in Drummondville and from 1979–1997 he taught at Université Laval. He also served on the faculty of the Université de Montréal in 1979–1980.

References[link]

• Cadrin, Paul. 1993. "Francois Morel: A Composer in Action." SoundNotes SN5:14-21.

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